Debate and Discussion

Take a look at all the other topics in this forum. In any section. There are NO posts with today's date on them. Nobody is viewing anybody's comics and if they are, it's very little. Mine doesn't get viewed at all. I have to advertise on facebook and even that doesn't work. Ever since the revamp, the whole site has gone to crap. Everyone I've ever known has left. If this continues, I am leaving for Comic Genesis._Discuss!

I didn't know Comic Genesis was still accepting comics! Hmm, I must be confusing them with another site.

From what I can see, you're definitely right about the forums being dead, which is tragic. I always like to point out that, even before the revamp, the forums here were pretty lethargic, and even then it wasn't uncommon for threads to sit for days without a response. But since the revamp things just went sub-zero real fast.

Unfortunately, since there are no comic stats, it's impossible to know how many people are reading our comics anymore. Judging by comments, I suspect my comic is getting nearly as many readers as it used to get. Reader feedback has remained fairly constant throughout, though slightly down right now (likely due to the state of the plot, and seasonal trends). At least one comic I follow here seems to be getting more feedback than a couple years ago. It does seem like the majority of comics here get little or no feedback… but then that, too, seems to have always been the case.

There are a lot of creative people still here, and good new comics are popping up all the time. Not nearly enough of them seem to be discovering the forums, but they are posting comics. If it feels like you're drifting alone out there, you're not. The best thing you can do, both to improve the site and attract people to your work, is to give as much feedback as you can to other comics here that you like. People who receive enough feedback tend to also give feedback. They may not always directly recipricate to the people who comment on their comics, but with enough artists mixing out there, it makes this a more vibrant art community, and eventually some of that comes around to everybody.

You're absolutely right. Remember when we used to light up the forum games section and have sooo much fun? I miss those days. I think that might have been where I got all my feedback from. But those people don't even seem to inhabit the site anymore. I've given out PQs and got NOTHING in months. It seems hopeless….

If there were one thing I'd like to see fixed ASAP, it would have to be the PQs. It's virtually impossible now to communicate with anybody here via PQ, since there's no notification, and not everybody checks their PQs on a regular basis.

My guess is that most people use this site for posting their comics, but do their socializing with like-minded weirdos on other better-suited social media like Facebook, or sites like SmackJeeves or ComicFury that have more active forums.

Well, nobody's really going to debate with you whether or not activity has died down on the Duck Forums. It simply has. There have even been a lot of consolidations just to keep people in the same area and willing to communicate.

But on the idea of The Duck itself dying? To me it's still performing its primary function. I think we ourselves are more responsible for keeping our comic traffic up than the Duck is. Over its lifetime the website has done things to push readers in our direction, such as daily features and the recently updated list. But things like this are only icing on the cake that is providing hosting for our comics.

I do miss the time when the much higher traffic helped make a certain amount of new readers stumble onto my comic regularly. But the absence of this made me realize that the true responsibility of gathering readers for my comic ultimately lands on me.

I actually started out on Comic Genesis (back when it was Keenspace), I left because that site was terribly designed and difficult to use…I mean, I have my complaints about the changes here, too, but man, if you wanna leave, you should probably head to Smack Jeeves or something. A site that actually WORKS.

As for DD, I agree with Hawk, man. If my little corner of DD isn't seeing much traffic, well that's on me. I've never been much into the forums, myself, they never struck me as being THAT active, and I've been here for a while (though admittedly, I don't post on the forums much, as my post count shows.)

I get your frustration, but you're probably going to find these problems at other places too, and if not these, then different problems. Every site has their issues. It's just the nature of things. It's a matter of deciding if it's worth the effort to you to strike out again. If it is, go for it. Might be better for you in the long run. For me, I've stuck with DD this long, and this site has treated me well. I'll be around a while longer.

(EDIT: Though I am pretty continually frustrated with how my posts look after I type them up…why do they format so weird?)

You're all right about a lot of stuff. For one, yes, Comic Genesis is extremely hard to use. And both SmackJeeves and Comic Fury have such an unprofessional look to them. They also don't have a homepage editor like DD has now. I'll have to relearn html and mess with uploading images and I don't have that kind of time. I used to be a hotshot html editor on my comic pages and had pretty awesome themes before they added the editor. I got too dependant on it. DD has just been my place since the very beginning! It WAS and IS easy to use and used to be so socially active. It's still got a homey feel with a new professional look but somehow it retarded itself._I just want my traffic back. I've done everything I can think of. There's no use in the forums so I've gone to facebook. My FB page for my comic has 117 likes right now but NOBODY likes or comments on my statuses. And I make statuses with links every time I update the comic. 30-60 people see my statuses every time I post one. I just don't understand it._As for the forums, they never used to be dead like this. They were very much alive before the revamp. After the revamp my life got kinda busy and hectic and I wasn't able to keep up on my comics anymore. Like at all. I used to have like 5 active comic serieses at the same time with plenty of traffic. I came back just a few months ago and everyone died!

Not many site works at the moment.Well they do but to get viewers …it's terrible!DD,Smackjeeves,Comic Furry etc… They all running low.I'm on probably 20 lol …. I'm still struggling hard as hell to just get some viewings.But yea..Even the forum's pretty much dead.Most of the posts are at least a month old.Hope it will change.

Most people who are still here just post in the general discussion area and in particular in the rant/vent/whatever thread. There are still a few of us happy to talk, though!

Duchess of Friday Newsposts and the holy Top TenHave a comic milestone, a community project or some comic-related news you’d like to see ina newspost? Send it to me via PQ or at hippievannews(at)gmail.com!

I was into the whole “web comic world” years ago when I was younger and stopped posting years ago when I started dabbling in other creative outlets (mainly drugs) and the flicker of love was extinguished. I never cared about the number of people who saw my work, it was admitedly low but I still posted and many folks were willing to leave feedback and comments to the point where I considered them people I knew on a personal level and I called them friends. This was in 2006, it's been eight years. I revisted my comic a few hours ago, I read every one of the roughly 45 strips I published over the period of 1.5-2 years; it was nostalgic to go back to a time when I still felt as if the whole world was still attainable and I had so much postivity I would vomit in my mouth if I ever had that level of self confidence again. I don't know any of you, but I want you to know that no matter how many people read what you publish, all it takes is one person to enjoy and truly appriciate something you created for it to be personally satisfying.

After the Quackcasts on the 23rd and 25th, it seems like the Duck most definitely is not dying. \o/ It should get a cameo in the latest zombie-themed issue of Heroes Alliance - no matter how many times it gets knocked down, the Duck always seems to rise again. :D

Thank you for that, Captain Hindsight. That's so true. It's too easy to let myself get overwhelmed and bogged down, despairing at all the problems with my comic and how it will never be what I'd like it to be. I used to have so much more energy and positivity too, and I don't know where it went. I lost sight of why I started doing this in the first place. I can kind of see it again now, but building up that momentum again is daunting.

Not sure where I was going with that. >_>

BTW, your comics don't seem to be up any more, Captain Hindsight. Any chance of posting them again? :)